Tuesday evening the Forney City Council met for the first of their November meetings, and received an update on the progress of the City’s Strategic Plan. 

Officially opening the meeting Councilman Parker delivered the invocation which was followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, led by a troop of Forney Boy Scouts who were attending the meeting as part of their community service badge requirement. 

Forney Mayor Darren Rozell next awarded the City’s Star Employee of the Month Award to Karen Sanders of the City’s Public Works Department who was recognized for outstanding service and given a certificate of achievement, a small star desk trophy and a day off work at full pay. 

Next City Manager Brian Brooks used a power point slide presentation to give an in depth report on the progress of City’s Strategic Plan and started off by explaining that most projects were moving along right on schedule and that he was recently excited to discover that the City now has “540 Face Book fans.”

Brooks stated “upgrades to the city’s website are almost finished and we hope to have them totally completed by Hometown Christmas. We’re in the process of marketing the website by getting it on all our stationary. We even took an ad out on the Chamber’s map to help get the website information out there.” 

City Manager Brooks also explained to the Council “we’re also still working on fostering strategic relationships within the community. I’m meeting
monthly with Dr. Brown from the school district and we’re meeting with our neighboring cities, too.” 

“In the past we have had some heated battles on certain items but we are reaching out to Kaufman County and to Mesquite, Rockwall, Sunnyvale and even Heath, to form better relationships. The Rockwall City Manager recently said she felt their Council would be more than receptive to a better relationship” said Brooks. 

Elaborating on the “Enriching the Quality of Life” section of the Strategic Plan, Brooks explained “we’re still working on improving communication with the public. We recently mailed out the City’s Welcome Booklet which is full of information about code enforcement. And we’re beginning to see a significant number of code violation cases beginning to close.” 

Completing his update, Brooks was asked by Councilman Andy Parker “how many code enforcement officers do we have now because I’m still seeing a lot of violations like high grass and junk vehicles.” 

Brooks responded “we call them Neighborhood Service Specialist and we now have one, Paul Armstrong. He’s been with us about three months now.”